Epic Games’ tech demo for Unreal Engine 5 has grabbed a lot of headlines over the past week, and while it was a very impressive glimpse of what kind of tech will be possible with next-gen consoles (or a close enough approximation of that, at any rate), people have also had some questions about it. The tech demo the engine was unveiled with was running on a PS5- but can the same tech demo also run on an Xbox Series X?
While that’s a question that still hasn’t been clearly answered, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney recently took to Twitter to confirm (in case there was any doubt) that Unreal Engine 5 – more specifically, its much-touted Nanite and Lumen techs – will be “fully supported on the Xbox Series X.
Meanwhile, in a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson from Epic confirmed the same, saying that though the PS5 is the target platform for Unreal Engine 5, the engine and all of its “core technologies” will also target the Xbox Series X.
“The demo we revealed [on Wednesday] is running on PS5 because that’s been our target platform for this particular experience,” the spokesperson said. “UE5, with core technologies like Niagara VFX and Chaos physics and destruction—and the newly revealed Nanite virtualized geometry and Lumen dynamic global illumination—is also targeting Xbox Series X.”
There’s still some ambiguity to those statements, and it’s curious that Epic aren’t mentioning whether the tech demo is also playable on an Xbox Series X, but it’s good to at least have the confirmation that the engine and some of the biggest advancements its touting are going to support the Xbox Series X as well.
Recently, Xbox boss Phil Spencer also gave his two cents on the engine- read more on that through here. Meanwhile, it’s also been confirmed that Unreal Engine 5 will also support current-gen platforms, as well as mobile devices.
The Unreal Engine 5 demo on PlayStation 5 was the culmination of years of discussions between Sony and Epic on future graphics and storage architectures.
The Nanite and Lumen tech powering it will be fully supported on both PS5 and Xbox Series X and will be awesome on both.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) May 15, 2020
